NAME

Text::Soundex - Implementation of the Soundex Algorithm as Described by Knuth

SYNOPSIS

use Text::Soundex;
$code = soundex $string; # get soundex code for a string
@codes = soundex @list; # get list of codes for list of strings
# set value to be returned for strings without soundex code
$soundex_nocode = 'Z000';

DESCRIPTION

This module implements the soundex algorithm as described by Donald Knuth in Volume 3 of The Art of Computer Programming. The algorithm is intended to hash words (in particular surnames) into a small space using a simple model which approximates the sound of the word when spoken by an English speaker. Each word is reduced to a four character string, the first character being an upper case letter and the remaining three being digits.

If there is no soundex code representation for a string then the value of $soundex_nocode is returned. This is initially set to undef, but many people seem to prefer an unlikely value like Z000 (how unlikely this is depends on the data set being dealt with.) Any value can be assigned to $soundex_nocode.

In scalar context soundex returns the soundex code of its first argument, and in array context a list is returned in which each element is the soundex code for the corresponding argument passed to soundex e.g.

@codes = soundex qw(Mike Stok);

leaves @codes containing ('M200', 'S320').

EXAMPLES

Knuth's examples of various names and the soundex codes they map to are listed below:

LIMITATIONS

As the soundex algorithm was originally used a long time ago in the US it considers only the English alphabet and pronunciation.

As it is mapping a large space (arbitrary length strings) onto a small space (single letter plus 3 digits) no inference can be made about the similarity of two strings which end up with the same soundex code. For example, both Hilbert and Heilbronn end up with a soundex code of H416.

AUTHOR

This code was implemented by Mike Stok (stok@cybercom.net) from the description given by Knuth. Ian Phillips (ian@pipex.net) and Rich Pinder (rpinder@hsc.usc.edu) supplied ideas and spotted mistakes.